Perl.com Taken over by Domain Squatters

Perl.com Taken over by Domain Squatters
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... wasn’t Perl.com an O’Reilly Publishers asset?

If you look at a case like this, there is absolutely no question or ambiguity "which perl.com domain people really want." This issue only exists because of an artificial monopoly and an application of capitalism to an allocation problem that doesn't exist.

Domain names should be a thin wrapper around private/public keypairs. Domain keys should be pinned per application or per first use OS-wide, with configuration tools to unpin and update the mapping. Any critical access, such as update servers, should always use the full key anyways. There is no reason in principle that there shouldn't be multiple name-key assignments for perl.com, except inasmuch as it would make webdevs' and OS developers' jobs slightly harder. Hell, ping both and see which one matches the pinned https key for perl.com, and this problem would already have been solved! This whole monopoly is caused by a bad band-aid technical solution for a social problem that we can and should find a better solution for.

I'm not saying "boycott DNS." I'm saying "the fact that everyone is fine with the current state of affairs is an embarrassment."

I want an OS built from the core up around a web of trust model. I want my browser to ask my (manually introduced) peers "which of those versions of perl.com do you think is the one I want." I want a computer with no hardcoded central server queries at all. (And while we're at it, I want it connected to the internet via mesh links.) But I'll never get that, because it'll always be easier to just hardcode some central authority and go home.